Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Monica Loera Was Murdered ... Say Her Name

That woman up there was shot and killed in Austin, Texas last week, and was then disrespected by the local police and media afterwards.

Monica Loera was a 43-year-old trans woman shot and killed on her own doorstep becoming possibly the first known trans woman to be murdered in the US in 2016. JonCasey Rowell has since been arrested in connection with the murder.

But the local police identified her as “David Loera” and called her “him”, even circulating an old driver’s license photo to media outlets rather than any other current picture of Ms. Loera.

TransGriot blogger Monica Roberts first reported the story and said one of the reasons that it didn’t make national news — trans women have an incredibly high risk of being murdered in this country and around the world simply for being trans — was because “the trans victim was misgendered by the police and subsequently the local media.”

It wasn’t “David Loera” who was shot and killed, it was Monica Loera and she deserves the respect in death that she was not afforded in life.

Say her name.

6 comments:

  1. Words fail.
    Heart aches.
    How many more must die, disrespected in death as in life, before we come to our senses?

    Not long ago my six-year-old great-nephew in Texas talked to his mother about a friend across the street. The friend had an older sister who used to be Seth but now is Sophia. She announced she was a girl at age four. My great-nephew was not sure if she was a boy or a girl. His mother, who knew the family, explained it to him and asked if it mattered. His response: "RuPaul would say, 'Whatever makes you happy.'"

    If there are such children in small Texas towns, perhaps there is hope.

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  2. @Michael
    i love that story. it gives me hope.

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  3. Damn, how hard is it to just use her preferred name? They're just going out of their way to disrespect someone who has already been murdered. Insult to injury.

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  4. What the Prof said, how difficult would it be for the cops to use both the correct pronoun & preferred name of the victim? -very sad & senseless death, indeed.

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  5. I just can't understand the hate that accompanies these deaths; no-one should be killed because their identity doesn't suit the killer's ideals. No-one should be killed full stop.

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Say anything, but keep it civil .......